Tip 101 – Promote your LinkedIn Public Profile
Put a link to your LinkedIn profile on the bottom of your email signatures, and include the link to your profile on your website, blog and other social media sites. Let people know that you can be found on LinkedIn. Ask them to connect with you. Use the public profile URL we talked about in Tip 5, in the very first section of this book.
You can also use this link on your website, on your blog, your business card and other social media sites to encourage more people to connect with you on LinkedIn. You are missing an opportunity if you do not let people know how to connect with you.
Networking is about finding out how you can help people and then doing it! Always focus on how you can help another connection first, remember that you first need to build credibility by relationship building, helping the other person in some way could be connecting them to someone in your network or sharing an article that will help them and is relevant to their business.
We call this “Givers Gain”® which is the philosophy of Business Network International or BNI as it is widely known as. BNI is the world’s largest and most successful referral organisation with over 150,000 members worldwide in over 50 countries. Both Derek and Sam who wrote this book are passionate about BNI, both involved at Director level helping members across Ireland and other countries to grow their business through the power of giving. If you help enough other people to get what they want, you will in return get what you want.
So if you take this concept to LinkedIn, if you help enough other people in your network it will all come back to you, this is based on the old adage of ‘what goes around, comes around’. If you love online networking using sites like LinkedIn then you will also love BNI. We recommend that you find a local chapter of BNI and go along to see how it could help your business to grow. If you are new to networking or if you want to learn how to be a more effective networker then this could be a huge opportunity for your business.
The number one rule when it comes to online networking is to steer clear of any form of selling. Don’t use LinkedIn to hunt, prospect or sell. This is the biggest turn off for most people and yet we constantly see people bombarding their contacts with messages spamming everyone in their LinkedIn contacts with message to buy a product or click on a website, with no relationship having been built. If you want to generate more business through LinkedIn then do not use it as a sales platform.
When you have a meeting planned with a new contact, it can be a very useful exercise to go through the person’s LinkedIn profile before you meet them. Look at 2 things:
– Their Information
Looking at someone’s information will help you to build rapport and the relationship, especially if you find something on the LinkedIn profile that you have as a mutual or common interest. You could bring this topic up in conversation and suddenly you’ll just click and the person is more likely to do business with you or want to help you.
– Their Connections
Once you know who you are going to be meeting, take a look at their LinkedIn connections. You will be able to see how many shared contacts you have as well as identify if they know someone that could be of use to you, whether that be a potential referral partner, introducer, end client or supplier. Be prepared going into your meeting and again, find a way to bring up the person or contact you are looking for.
When you sit down with a new contact, you will want to help the other person and see how you can be of assistance to them. Quite often, one of the most powerful ways to build the relationship face to face is to offer to connect the person to someone you know. This introduction could prove to be invaluable and will come back to you in more ways than one.
So always have your LinkedIn contacts handy, ideally the LinkedIn mobile App, for your Smartphone or Tablet. Make sure that you refer to LinkedIn during every face to face meeting. Offer your connections to the other person, ask them to take a look through and if there is someone there that they would like to meet to just let you know.
This will move your credibility factor up and the person will want to help you in some way. This is where you can leverage the knowledge you have already gained about their network from looking them up before you arranged to meet. This will take your face to face meetings to a new level and will allow you to grow your business by attracting more referrals, positive word of mouth about you and your business as well as delivering some great contacts back to you.
By using the Advanced Search Tools that we have already looked at in this book, you can really start to use LinkedIn as a lead generation tool. Once you have searched for people that you would like to do business with, ask them to connect with you, then follow up with a soft non-sales driven message. You’ll be surprised how willing people are to connect and hear what you have to say if you don’t do it in a pushy way.
You can generate real leads and opportunities on LinkedIn, you just need to be diligent and disciplined on it. Set goals for yourself around how many people you will approach in a week, how many follow up messages you will send and you’ll see instant results if you start taking action, tracking and measuring the impact of your proactive use of this amazing business platform.
I would highly recommend a free consultation with our sales funnels expert team if you have yet to figure this whole internet marketing and lead generation thing out. if you are looking to create lead magnets, landing pages, opt in pages, build email lists and market to people who find your LinkedIn profile, LinkedIn groups and LinkedIn articles then contact me today to book your free, no obligation chat with our sales funnels superhero! Just drop me an email to: sam@meetsamrathling.com and use the subject line: “I need a Superhero!”
It is vital that you remember the VCO Process in all that you do, as well as focusing on helping others in your LinkedIn network, by giving first. As this is the last tip in the book, it feels right that the last tip is give, give and give some more.
This is one of the most powerful ways to generate business opportunities. There are many ways for you to give online, and then transfer this into your face to face business networking. We will leave you with our favourite quote about giving:
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give” Winston Churchill
So we have come to the end of the list of 107 Tips to Grow Your Business using LinkedIn, remember to visit this page to get your download of the tips as a PDF so you can check off your progress and not have to constantly refer back to the book:
http://meetsamrathling.com/107-Tips-Checklist-For-LinkedIn
We would like to genuinely thank you for reading this book, which we hope you have found useful. Over time as you implement the steps, you will start to see your profile views increasing, your appearance in search results going up and your ability to engage, connect with and manage your contacts get easier.
The impact and effectiveness of your online networking will over time start to win you more clients, new opportunities and help you to grow your business. We now hope you feel more LinkedIn than LinkedOut.
To Your Success!